Categorisation of High-level programming languages

In this article, we are going to learn about the high level programming languages, their types and classifications based on design paradigm, application use.
Submitted by Prerana Jain, on June 26, 2018

High-level programming languages

The high-level programming languages can be categorized into different types on the basis of the application area in which they are employed as well as the different design paradigms supported by them. The high-level programming languages are designed for use in a number of areas. Each high-level language is designed by keeping its target application area in mind. Some of the high-level languages are best suited for business domains, while others are apt in the scientific domain only. The high-level language can be categorized on the basis of the various programming paradigms approved by them. The programming paradigms refer to the approach employed by the programming language for solving the different types of problem.

1. Categorisation based on Application

On the basis of application area the high level language can be divided into the following types:

i) Commercial languages

These programming languages are dedicated to the commercial domain and are specially designed for solving business-related problems. These languages can be used in organization for processing handling the data related to payroll, accounts payable and tax building applications. COBOL is the best example of the commercial based high-level programming language employed in the business domain.

ii) Scientific languages

These programming languages are dedicated to the scientific domain and are specially designed for solving different scientific and mathematical problems. These languages can be used to develop programs for performing complex calculation during scientific research. FORTRAN is the best example of scientific based language.

iii) Special purpose languages

These programming languages are specially designed for performing some dedicated functions. For example, SQL is a high-level language specially designed to interact with the database programs only. Therefore we can say that the special purpose high-level language is designed to support a particular domain area only.

iv) General purpose languages

These programming languages are used for developing different types of software application regardless of their application area. The various examples of general purpose high-level programming languages are BASIC, C, C++, and java.

2. Categorisation based on Design paradigm

On the basis of design paradigms the high level programming languages can be categorised into the following types:

i) Procedure-oriented languages

These programming languages are also called an imperative programming language. In this language, a program is written as a sequence of procedures. Each procedure contains a series of instruction for performing a specific task. Each procedure can be called by the other procedures during the program execution. In this type of programming paradigms, a code once written in the form of a procedure can be used any number of times in the program by only specifying the corresponding procedure name. Therefore the procedure-oriented language allows the data to move freely around the system. The various examples of procedure-oriented language are FORTRAN, ALGOL, C, BASIC, and ADA.

ii) Logic-oriented languages

These languages use logic programming paradigms as the design approach for solving various computational problems. In this programming paradigms predicate logic is used to describe the nature of a problem by defining the relationship between rules and facts. Prolog is the best example of the logic-oriented programming language.

iii) Object-oriented languages

These languages use object-oriented programming paradigms as the design approach for solving a given problem. In this programming language, a problem is divided into a number of objects which can interact by passing messages to each other. C++ and C# are the examples of object-oriented programming language.